Microsoft to acquire the English language

Author Unknown

OXFORD, ENGLAND - In a move that has stunned competitors,
Microsoft announced that it intends to acquire the English
language. At a packed news conference on the Oxford University campus,
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates delivered the news to an assembly of
reporters, researchers of major universities, and employees of Random House.

"We expect a lot of growth in the usage of English in the next five to ten
years", said Gates. "We believe we are in the best position to make the
kind of changes necessary for consumers of English to become more
productive."

When asked what kind of changes Microsoft was planning for the future, Gates
replied, "Development on the English language has been too unfast a process
for too many years. We intend to speed up the rate at which new English
products arrive in the marketplace, in addition to making major aesthetic
changes to the English language itself. Beta versions of dictionaries will
be released to the public at least twice a year and these dictionaries will
be significantly enhanced from current versions. Compare this to the
current ten to twenty year cycle."

"Major enhancements to the area of English aesthetics will start with
version 1.0 of Microsoft English (tm)", said Gates. "One of our primary
goals is to
make the use of the language more pleasant for the computer user. For
instance, the phrase "The new version of the software contains bugs that
slow down the system by hogging the cpu, and may eventually hang or crash
the machine and cause corruption", will now read "The new version of the
software contains issues that unspeed the system by empowering the cpu, and
may eventually delay or land the system and cause data dehancement". As
you can see, the second version is much more appealing. We are also planning
to remove certain words such as "anti-trust", "anti-competitive", and
"manipulate", as they have shown to have no practical use in modern
English. Microsoft intends to use its position as a world leader in
aesthetic design for the benefit of all users."

When asked if Microsoft had any plans to acquire other languages, Gates
simply replied with a "no comment". At the end of the news conference,
Gates and several Microsoft executives were seen heading towards the English
channel.

In a separate news conference in Mountain View, California, Oracle, Sun and
Netscape announced that all their future products will use Esperanto as the
primary language for documentation, packaging, and interface design.
"Users are tired of having to switch to a different language every time they
travel to a new country", said Sun CEO Scott McNealy. "The widespread adoption of
Esperanto will ensure that this will never have to happen again." McNealy
also stated "Microsoft's acquisition of English is clearly a move that doesn't
benefit users of English, but it does enhance Microsoft's position in the
marketplace. English is the perfect choice of a language for a company
like Microsoft; it's slow, bloated, inefficient, carries too much legacy data
and is too hard to learn and understand. On the other hand, Esperanto is a
clean design from the ground up. It will work in any country."